As service providers continue to deploy and upgrade network infrastructures in support of voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP) traffic, network infrastructures are rapidly becoming more complex. In addition to the potentially large number of deployed network components, the network infrastructures are complex in that IP network components are increasingly being deployed not only in support of IP-to-IP communications, but for interfacing to other networks (e.g., Publicly Switched Telephone Networks) as well. This situation is exacerbated by use of network components provided by numerous equipment vendors, especially since some network components are still relatively undeveloped with respect to reliability and scale.
In order to certify proposed network services, service providers often subject the proposed network services to a myriad of call flows to ensure that the proposed network services work for every potential call flow requested by customers in the production network. Unfortunately, identification of every potential call flow is quite difficult. Furthermore, development of test scripts for testing the call flows is complex. As such, service provider call flow testing personnel are often unable to perform the extensive evaluation of complex call flows that may occur in the production environment due to a lack of insufficient processes for performing such extensive evaluation.
Accordingly, a need exists in the art for a method and apparatus for generating at least one call flow test script for certifying at least one service prior to deployment of the service for supporting customer traffic.